The photos below were taken on our 3 dat work trip to Tapah, Perak in May - Here we did baseline assessments of 25 farms for one of Wildasia's small oil palm farmer projects which aims to get small farms RSPO certified (a global sustainable agriculture certification)!
Andrea (the Italian intern) ourside the dealership
In the field - getting ready to take a short walk around the farm
I guess this photo doesn't really need an explanation, I just thought it was a pretty photo of all the tall oil palm trees
The palm trees are very tall (mature trees get up to 20 metres) so it was a bit difficult to get a good photo but you can kind of see the fruit bunches at the top - these fruit bunches are what is used for the production of palm oil!
A close up photo of some of the fruits that have fallen from the tree! For each hectare of oil palm the annual production averages 10 tonnes of fruit yielding around 3000 kg of palm oil - So it is a lot of oil that is being produced!!
Me in the field
Some farms plant oil palms all the way to the river banks which is not very environmental friendly as fertilizer or chemical run off then reaches the river directly, polluting the river.... But it does look beautiful!!
Our fieldwork team: Jyun, Andrea and I
The best hotel in all of Langkap.... (Read: The only hotel in all of Langkap)!! But what the town might lack in luxury accommodation it makes up for in food - we had lots of lovely Chinese food
